A number of applications and technologies involve structures having a well-defined arrangement of distinct regions. Normally, these structures are defined by patterning processes such as lithography, embossing, and stamping, and have length scales ranging from nanometers to several microns and to even millimeters. In many of these systems, it may be necessary or beneficial to apply an additional component or treatment to, or above, only one of the regions at the surface. One commonly used technique for performing this is through the use of a mask material to protect regions where this additional application or treatment is not desired. Effectively, the mask material directs this treatment to the intended surfaces, which are fully exposed. Unfortunately, typical procedures used to generate a mask by lithographic or other means can be expensive and error prone, particularly when alignment or overlay is required. Thus, techniques for circumventing these conventional approaches would be highly advantageous.
A particular example in which such strategies would be useful involves integrated circuits (ICs) comprised of metal and dielectric components. It is widely known in the semiconductor industry that the speed of propagation of interconnect signals is one of the most important factors controlling overall circuit speed as feature sizes are reduced and the number of devices per unit area is increased. Throughout the semiconductor industry, there has been a strong drive to reduce the dielectric constant, k, of the dielectric materials existing between metal lines and/or to minimize the thickness of layers having comparatively larger dielectric constants, e.g., a cap barrier layer. Both of these approaches reduce the effective dielectric constant, keff, of the components between metal lines and as a result, interconnect signals travel faster through conductors due to a reduction in resistance-capacitance (RC) delays. Unfortunately, these strategies are difficult to implement due to limitations in maintaining sufficient properties, i.e., mechanical, barrier, electrical, etc., that result when there is a reduction in thickness or changes in the chemistry of the layers.
As such, a method of producing fine patterns on a substrate, which overcomes the above-mentioned drawbacks, is needed.